


his broken heart and all her scars

by youheldyourbreath



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 21:38:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18786712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youheldyourbreath/pseuds/youheldyourbreath
Summary: The smallfolk take to him with ease. His father was popular, in his time, and there was peace under Robert Baratheon’s reign. He knows they look at him and hope he will bring the same security. He endeavors to be a good lord.A girl once told him he might be suited for it.He tries not to miss her.He fails.





	his broken heart and all her scars

It rains for four straight weeks when Lord Gendry Baratheon finally arrives at Storm’s End. His new land is often grey and dismal, but when there is a respite in near endless rain, the sunshine that peaks out behind the clouds is the warmest, most golden light he has ever seen. 

The people of Storm’s End are as hard as the lands. They are weathered and enduring as the cliffs beaten by the stormy seas. “Hard bastards,” Davos remarks after two weeks. Lord Gendry Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End, snorts into his goblet, much to the chagrin of his Maester. 

He likes the Stormlands. He likes how the walls and the forests and the people are infinitely strong. He finally understands what Arya meant by being  _of the North_. He knows he is _of the Stormlands_. It is home. He has never had a home before. 

It terrifies him. 

Jon promises to write him when he settles back North. He never does. Jon Snow disappears into memories, then myth, then legend. He mourns his friend. He mourns too many people. 

He does not know what he is meant to do, now that the war is over. He was not raised to be a lordling and he has no real knowledge of how to run a castle or provide for his people. All he knows is that he wants to make the Stormlands a place of peace and prosperity. The Baratheon bannermen have suffered enough. 

The smallfolk take to him with ease. His father was popular, in his time, and there was peace under Robert Baratheon’s reign. He knows they look at him and hope he will bring the same security. He endeavors to be a good lord. 

A girl once told him he might be suited for it. 

He tries not to miss her. 

He fails. 

Lord Gendry Baratheon throws himself into his Lordship with vigor. He tries to learn everything. He works from dusk until dawn. He has never known highborn leisure and so he works and works and works until his knees ache. He stands until he cannot possibly stand anymore, and then stands a little longer. 

He works side-by-side his people and he learns their names. The baker is called Rydan and the master smith is named Tobas. He learns his apprentice’s name, too; for he was once a smith’s apprentice and he remembers the labor of such a task. He learns the name of everyone in his castle and their children, too. He spends hours learning and listening. 

After six months in Storm’s End, they still call him  _m’lord_. 

He tries not to think of a girl when they do. 

He fails. 

He thinks of her most when Davos obliquely mentions marriage. He remembers the dim moonlight and the orange hue of the torches when he dropped to his knees and asked her to be his wife. He hates that he can still almost taste her kiss. 

“I won’t marry,” he says, and Lord Gendry Baratheon of Storm’s End begins to grow accustomed to Ser Davos Seaworth’s disappointment. 

On the one year anniversary of the storm that welcomed him to the Stormlands, his council proposes a tourney. He has never seen a tourney. He knows songs about them and recalls one summer where every bloody knight in King’s Landing came into his shop tasking him with impractical armor for such an event, but he does not know what he is meant to do. 

His council gently guides him and the Master of Coin sets the winning purse to draw all manner of men into the castle. Gendry interrupts their planning to amend one rule. “Women can enter, too,” he says. He does not mean  _her,_  but having known her, he cannot pretend that women are not as capable of fighting as men, if not moreso. 

He pretends not to hear the songs they sing about Arya Stark, the Savior of the Realm and the Protector of Man. The songs make her out to be a giant of mythic proportions. She had been so very small when he held her in his arms and kissed her and made love to her the night before death came to Winterfell. The songs have it wrong. 

Davos laughs brightly, “You heard your Lord. Women, too.” 

When the day of the tourney arrives, men and women alike stand shoulder-to-shoulder to compete for the champion’s purse. Gendry itches to enter, to swing his hammer once more, but his council advises he sit impartial. “It is not good for moral to have a Lord challenge his subjects,” his Maester says in the measured, temperate manner Gendry is learning to loathe. “Otherwise they may feel they cannot truly compete for fear of hurting you, my lord.” 

All he hears is how other he is from the smallfolk, now. He, who was once a smith’s apprentice, is so elevated. He sits apart. 

 _I don’t know how to be the lord of anything_. 

In the end, a girl of eight and ten wins. She has long, red hair that reminds him of the Lady Stark of Winterfell. Her eyes are steely and hard, though, like her sister. It is the eyes he focuses on that night when she, unprompted and uninvited, raps on his chamber door and he takes her to bed. 

Bran told him, in the days after the war, that his father went searching for Lyanna Stark in every woman he bedded. Gendry wonders if he is doomed to repeat his mistakes. 

Two months after the tourney, Davos brings it up again, “You ought to get married, lad.” 

Gendry squints at the scribbled letter from Samwell Tarly. He has been practicing his letters for over a year now, but the task of reading still brings on an ache behind his eyes. He puts down the parchment and blearily blinks up at his advisor, “This, again?”

Davos nods, “Aye, this again.” He plows forward before Gendry can interject, “You are wanting of a woman’s company, boy. Everyone with eyes can tell.” 

He shakes his head, “I won’t marry.” 

“Arya Stark is not coming back,” he says bluntly. Gendry recoils at the words. Time has done nothing to dull the wound of missing her. She feels as freshly gone from him as the night she left Winterfell with the Hound for vengeance against Cersei. “We don’t even know if she is alive,” Davos continues.

He grits his teeth and stands abruptly from his chair, “Don’t say that. Don’t even suggest it.” 

“Nobody has seen her since she left Winterfell. No one even knows if she made it to King’s Landing.” 

“Cersei is dead,” Gendry says. 

“We don’t know if she killed him.” 

“She was on her list.” Arya Stark left him for a list of names. He refuses to entertain a world where his abandonment was not justified. For, if she had left him and never killed Cersei, what then would have been the point? 

Davos releases a long, labored sigh. “You have a duty to your house and your people to produce an heir.” 

Gendry allows his temper to take control of him. He slams his hand on his desk, silencing the old man, and storms out of his solar. He is a Baratheon, he thinks, and his fury is unmatched. 

It is two more years before Davos brings up marriage, again.

Gendry writes to Sansa. And, as every letter before, the Lady of Winterfell does not know where her sister is and wishes him health and good fortune. He cries that night in his rooms where no man, woman or child can see him fall apart. 

He awakes the next morning and agrees to consider marriage. 

Within six weeks, three young and beautiful ladies arrive in the Stormlands. They are perfectly and lovely and all-together wrong. He beds two of them, all the same. 

Word spreads that the young Lord Baratheon is in search of a wife. It spreads across the Stormlands and to the Reach and Winterfell. He receives a letter from Sansa that he pours over a dozen times in the warm candlelight of his chambers. 

_My Dearest Lord Baratheon,_

_I have heard you are wanting a wife. I thought this strange, since the bulk of our correspondence these last few years has been in regards to my sister Arya. If you have cast her from your mind, I apologize for the unwelcome reminder of her disappearance. If not, I ask, what woman could compare to the Slayer of the Night King?_

_Most affectionately,_

_Lady Stark_

It takes him nine days before he writes back. 

_My Friend, Sansa,_

_I love your sister. I suspect I always will. But I am the last of the House Baratheon. I know you understand such a burden. To be a good lord, I must do what is necessary to secure the health, happiness and safety of my people. An heir makes them secure, even if it is the death of my own happiness._

_You write very pretty words, but I am not as well-versed in subtlety as you._

_Gendry_

The next letter he receives from Winterfell makes his heart stop. 

 _None of it will be worth anything if you’re not with me_. 

_Arya_

He rides for Winterfell the next morning. He rides hard and takes very little time to rest. The small party of men and women that accompany him beg him on the third day to slow down, lest he tire his horse. He hates how slowly it all seems to move. 

It has been nearly four years since he has seen her face. He remembers it clearly. He dreams it every night. 

When they finally arrive at Winterfell, Lady Sansa is standing in the courtyard, awaiting the Baratheon men. He dismounts from his horse and crushes her in a hug. He knows it is not protocol, but he is vibrating with excitement. 

Sansa smooths down her dress when he releases her and tuts, “Forgive me, my lord, but we did not know you were coming.” 

“Is she here?” he asks, in agony and hope. He desperately does not want it to have been a wasted journey. Her letter burns in his satchel. 

The Lady Stark sighs, “She did not mention she wrote you. Come.” She starts to walk away from the onlooking party. “Walk with me.” 

He barks orders to his men to take their horses to the stables before plodding off behind Sansa who has elected not to look back at him. He supposes most people follow after her without question. She must be used to being explicitly obeyed. 

“Sansa--” 

“Gendry, you have been a Lord long enough now to respect my title,” Sansa smoothy says. 

He grins, “Apologies, Lady Stark, but I’m Gendry?”

Her face grows very serious, “She only ever calls you Gendry.”

His stomach plummets. He swallows thickly and boldly states what he put together on the King’s Road, “You’ve known where she was this entire time?” He wants to rage and shout. He has written the Lady Sansa regularly for years, asking after Arya, damn near hoping and praying, and she knew the entire time.

He feels cheated. 

She quietly replies, “She asked me not to say. We begged her to reconsider.” 

They arrive at the old forges from the war. He and the other smiths built extensions to accommodate the workload for the battle against the dead. They do not look like they have been used since the battle. The old forges are tucked into the corner of the vast courtyard and far away from any major hub of action in Winterfell. It acts as a relic to a long night and all who lost their lives in the pursuit of morning. 

Sansa opens the door for him and he walks inside. She does not follow him. 

He learns why. 

He is not relieved or joyful when he finally sees her after four years.  _Arya_. He is furious. It hits him like the waves that crash against the shores of Storm’s End. She abandoned him. She left with no notice of her whereabouts or her well-being. He has spent nearly four years agonizing over the girl who slipped through his fingers. 

She looks gorgeous. 

“You grew your hair out again,” she says to him, her first words in four years. 

He growls, “You left me.” It shoots out like an accusation. He is mad. He is grieving. She looks too beautiful for words. 

She, too, has grown her hair longer. It is not pulled slickly back. It hangs freely around her face and she is tan. If she has been in Winterfell, she has only just returned from a warmer climate. She is sun-kissed and positively glowing. 

Arya does not flinch at his accusation, she barely looks shaken, as if she expected him to lash out. She remains standing in the corner of the long-dead forge. “I left everyone.” 

“We aren’t talking about everyone. We are talking about you and me.” 

“It isn’t about you. It was never about you, you stupid bull.” For a moment, she sounds like Arry. Her voice has the same bite from their youth. He wills himself not to smile. He is furious with her.

He stalks toward her and, to her credit, in the face of his aggression, she only lifts her chin to meet his eyes. While others are cautious of his size and strength, Arya looks almost bored by his display of anger. She floats above it and it upsets him more. 

Gendry fears what he has always feared in the years since the war-- that he cared about her more than she could ever care about him. 

“That isn’t true,” she says, and he flushes when he realizes he admitted his fear out loud. “That isn’t true,” she repeats, more softly, and her eyes thaw. Arya Stark has never checked an impulse before in her life. She says and does exactly what is on her mind. She wants to hold him, he realizes, so she does. She wraps her arms around his middle and tucks her head against his chest. “I don’t want you to marry some Southron girl,” she whispers. It costs her something to admit it. 

His anger is still palpable. He can taste it bitterly at the back of his throat. He wants to hold her more than he wants to be angry. 

Lord Gendry Baratheon releases a breath and allows the last four years to wash away in the salty current of the seas of home. He crushes her to his chest, holding her desperately, and she begins to grab at the back of his cloak, in a bid to draw him ever nearer. He bruises a kiss on the top of her head, “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?”

She nuzzles her nose into his chest and it strikes him as a very tender gesture for a woman so fierce. She contains every contradiction. He wants her more for all of her complexities. Seven hells, he has missed her. 

Arya fists her hands in his cloak, seizing hold of him, and says, “When my list was done, I didn’t know what to be or what to do. I needed to find out for myself what I wanted, what I needed.” 

“And--?” She lifts her head from his chest and, without hesitation, drags him down into a kiss by her teeth. It is her assured viciousness that makes his knees weak. His wolf girl. “Arya,” he grunts with no true purpose. He wants to say her name. He wants to groan it. He wants to mumble it in their bed in the early hours of the morning in Storm’s End.

She releases him, after a time, when his cloak is bunched on the ground and the ties on his jerkin are askew. She abruptly pants, “Sansa sent me your letter. Don’t marry some girl you don’t know.” He kisses her with a fury befitting his house words. She meets him and gives as good as she gets. She speaks again when they have divested her of her shirt. “Marry me.” 

Those words are the only ones that could make him stop kissing her after four agonizing years. He blinks stupidly down at her, “Truly?”

Arya nods, “Marry me, Gendry. Marry  _me_. Just Arya. Not some lady in some castle somewhere. Me.” 

He cups her face and brushes his forge-worked thumbs across her cheeks. “Arya,” he whispers. She looks so young as she stares up at him, terrified and hopeful. He smiles because he loved her then, he loves her now, he will always love her. She is an inevitability. She is Arya and he is Gendry, and he loves her. “I’m not getting on my knee again.” 

She swats his chest and he allows it. He kisses her again and she allows it. 

They marry in the Godswood in Winterfell three days later. Sansa presents him with a beautiful cloak of both Baratheon and Stark colors and sigils. It is a detailed, remarkable piece of art. When he asks her how long she has been working on the cloak, she wryly says, “Four years.” 

* * *

 

It is not raining when Arya Stark, the famed Night King Slayer, finally arrives at Storm’s End. Her new land is often grey and dismal, her husband explains, but with her arrival, she has caused a respite in near endless rain. The sunshine that peaks out behind the clouds is the warmest, most golden light she has ever seen. 

It is home. She has had a home before. She looks at Gendry and thinks she quite looks forward to having one, again. 


End file.
